Marcelle Medallion Quilt

Well well well.  I have finished the Marcelle Medallion Quilt finally, the one I started last September.

back of Marcelle

One thing I just realized today  about medallion quilts is they looks odd being off center on the bed if you don't pull them all the way up over the pillows.  TRAUMA!

So, it's done.  It's king sized in case I ever have a king bed again.  The bedroom in our rental house is blue so it matches, what more could one want?.  It only took this long to finish due to the green border.  One of my cats (yes, my fat one)  had ripped a few holes in it while trying to jump up on the bed when I was testing it for size a long way back, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to quilt it without doing some major work.

I chose a random kelp like design that involved a lot of bubbles over the rips.  I think I patched them pretty securely!  We will see though.  I'm a little sad this will soon be covered with cat hair, but we make sacrifices for our children.

I'm actually on a quilting roll this month.  I've made good progress on a few quilts, made some Noodlehead 241 totes that have made me happy to play with, made a lot of clothes.. strike that.. started a lot of clothes and haven't managed to finish any of them...  

This was a fun quilt to make, and although I'm starting another medallion quilt, I have a feeling I will be revisiting this pattern at some point in the future. If you randomly stumbled onto this post and are suddenly struck dumb by the need to make one too, there's a great flickr group with tons of inspiration, and wonderful QAL instructionS and advice at the Penny Poppleton blog.

Marcelle Medallion and uh huh, shopping

I'd really better start reading all the blogs on how to get better pictures  That and making myself a big old pressing board so I can keep this thing wrinkle-free for more than 5 minutes. As I said in my last post, I've finished my Marcelle Medallion, and now my batting has arrived & I'm piecing the back.  It ended up at about 86" by 94". My husband was sweet enough to hold it up for me and this is the first quilt that's been so large he couldn't hold the corners.

On another  note, I just got back from Bellingham, WA.  It was one of those days  - the end of a trip where you are eager to get home. I was on my way to my last commitment, lunch plans.  There was that moment when you realize you have enough time to stop by that quilt store and spend 15 minutes in it, or you can risk going to have lunch first, and then being way too impatient to drive back through all the busy streets to check it out.

Of course it was a no-brainer, and I made the quick stop at Fourth Corner Quilts.  I hadn't checked for fabric stores before I left, and wasn't even sure what I'd find.  Really it was such a blur that I can't say much about it - it had multiple rooms, with both classic and modern prints and sold Janomes, one of which I lovingly caressed as I walked by it and its $4k price tag. 

I am sure I missed a lot of gems, but I didn't have time get fabric cut.  Luckily for me - pre-cuts!  They had a lot of charm packs, layer cakes and even the hexagon precuts, but on a lot of the fabric displays, they also had 1/4 and 1/2 yard cuts of a pretty good variety of fabric, more than I've seen anywhere before. I ran around in glee and when I got up to the register I realized I had a nice choice for the basis of a new quilt.  I already have some of the Ladder Dot and I'd used a Comma charm pack for this pillow.  I'm pretty sure that  is Kaufman Interweave Chambray in sorbet there, I was happy to see it in person, I likely never would have ordered any, and it's much prettier than any of the pictures I've seen (yup, including that one) convey.

Birch Bay, WA

Considering making another trip up sometime soon just to browse in depth - I used to make the 2.5 hour drive this route to visit my husband when we were dating, and now it's only 1.5 hours so it seems like a win ;)  Also I got to see a bald eagle and gorgeous sunsets, so I see no down sides to going again.

Marcelle Medallion Quilt Top Finished

Oh ya!!!!  Despite being thwarted by cats at every turn, I managed to get all the pieces of the top out from under them long enough to get this sewn together. These colors aren't really what ever would've chosen, but I think I'm going to like it since our bedroom in this rental house is blue.

One problem - one of my cats (I know which one, dammit) jumped up on it when I was testing the width out on the bed, and poked and ripped holes.  The rip's about 1/4" but since it's in a solid border, I'm not really sure how I'm going to fix that.  I see some creepy applique in my future!

After my plus signs I added a border of Domino Dots in Starfruit from the Waterford park collection, wider on the sides than the top and bottom, and then a 2" border of Kaffe Fasset shot cotton in Blue Jean (I had JUST enough to do it, and one border it a teeny bit narrow on the last couple of inches.  Nevertheless it's some giant size I have no idea about the final measurements of, but I think if we ever switch to a king size bed it will actually cover it adequately!

I'm looking forward to getting my husband to stand around holding it over the balcony so I can take a picture of the whole thing - after getting rid of all the spider webs out on the porch that is.

Still haven't started piecing the back, but it's going to be simple.  For the binding I'm using Bella Stripes in Citron by Lotta Jansdotter -  I've only used solids in binding up til now, so I'm looking forward to trying something different.

I'm just waiting for my Warm and Natural batting to get here, and debating if I want to hand quilt it or not. *shudder*.

Embroidery & Marcelle Medallion Progress

x
"Suck It" is a 7" hoop.  It tends to be something I say instead of "Screw Off" when I'm in a good mood.  Really, I usually mean it very lovingly!
It isn't particularly noticeable here but I used a darker orange at the centers of the petals and a lighter one for the outside edge and tips.  I used this nifty cursive font generator to plot my lettering


I also did one of the girls from a Natalie Krim picture, I didn't get the smile down, there's a lot of practice I need to do on learning fine detail.  She's got some really cool quirky stuff, and I wanted something fun to look at.





I'm just slowly making progress on my Marcelle Medallion plusses.  Finally put up a quilt wall this week on a 10 foot tall wall since pinning a bit of batting to the wall wasn't very satisfying. This one is out of range of my cat's claws, but kinda out of mine in a lot of ways at 5'2"...

My cats remain highly amused that I'd been laying out my fabric on the floor in the interim, and I'm tired of their smug looks every time I walk in the sewing room to see the mess they've made.

Marcelle Medallion Borders 5 and 6

In an effort to gently increase the size of my quilt, for border  I made my pieces 2.5" by 3.75" instead of the 1.75" by 3.75" called for.  I also made three rows, and ya know what?  I had no idea there were only two rows until this very second and I looked up the dimensions...no clue how I got the idea there were three, but it fits into my king sized plans quite well *cough*

Border 6 - I'd been auditioning 8 different prints for it, but nothing seemed just right so I went with a solid green.  This will make it an easier transition to a print here, I think & I'll be adding a solid print border to this before I add border 7.

I've started the crosses for it too, during a bout of insomnia that kept me cutting and trimming until 5:30 am yesterday morning - trying not to think about how many more blocks I'll have to make to compensate for the increased size though :o. 

On another note, last weekend I spent several days on Vashon Island, and my sister and I made a stop at Island Quilter.  They had Carolyn Friedlander's Tangelo quilt hanging in the front of the store, and my sister said I could make one for her. :D  It was absolutely gorgeous in person, and they sold kits but we decided to choose our own fabrics, so we grabbed most of the 12 fabrics needed for it, and I'm supplementing the rest from my stash. 

Island Quilter goodies

Marcelle Medallion - borders 3,4 & 4.5

I had to spread the flying geese construction portion of this over a several day period to spare my sanity.  There's supposed to be 16 on each side but I had to cut it down to 15 so the borders weren't entirely too long.  I did some searches to see if anybody had said what their finished FG block size was, and although I saw some people ask the question, I didn't find an answer.


One thing I don't like about Liberty Love - it doesn't give finished sizes for each border/block as you go (or I missed it the dozen times I looked - not out of the realm of possibility), I don't know if my center square was too small, or it was some other border that led to the flying geese issue, or if I needed to trim all the blocks down to some beats the hell out of me size so 16 fit.  Nevertheless I am aiming for a queen+ size instead of a throw now so keeping track doesn't matter so much after this point, when I get to the crosses I will make it work.  Sigh, I can't say that without feeling like I'm quoting Tim Gunn.


With that in mind, I decided to add an extra solid border with Kate Spain's Plumage in indigo at this point, and started the change to a rectangular shaped finished product.  Things are starting to ripple without having the exact measurements each block is supposed to be, which I suppose is going to call for quilt blocking at some point, maybe today, I just don't have a good place to do it since I haven't picked up the foam insulation boards I meant to after our move.  I'm not sure how many people I keep an eye on in the blogging quilting world do this - I never really see people talk about it, so I assume they just don't suck at accurate cutting like I do so don't need to ;)

I've reached the maximum quilt size I can take a picture of without standing on chairs to get the entire thing in a picture, better get my butt around to putting up another quilt wall of some sort.

Marcelle Medallion - Borders 1-3

The second border for the Marcelle Medallion QAL came together yesterday pretty easily, luckily I had a 60 degree triangle ruler. DISLIKE all the teeny cutting, so much so that I'm taking a break from cutting the 3 1/8 squares for the flying geese to write this.

border tryouts - blurry cell ;)

I pondered four choices for border 3 - I think I made the right choice for me, although the whole quilt seems to be getting darker and darker as I go, since I'm incorporating a good amount of dark blue and black in border 4.

I am considering making this a king sized quilt - the one I was working on is pretty much at a dead halt until I can get my quilt friendly sewing machine in for repairs so I can finish the quilting it and bind it.  I know I'll need to do something more interesting than adding more solid borders, but I'm debating what.  Orange Peel? Giant 60 degree triangles? X+ squares?  Ha..srsly joking on that last one, I don't have the patience for that much work, especially as I'm considering hand quilting this.

Marcelle Medallion - Cause Everybody Is Doing It

Modern Medallion from Handstitched class

Well they really are - and I don't blame them. I was pretty conflicted about making the Marcelle Medallion - I've seen a few versions I love (and wanted to avoid to temptation to copy them exactly so I'd know I'd like my end product), and a lot that I like well enough but not enough to want to make something so complicated.  It gave me some horrible flashbacks to the Modern Medallion from the Handstitched class at Stitched in Color (not that it wasn't a fun quilt to make, but the hours of hand sewing almost did me in!)

This weekend I realized if I got busy I might be able to start and keep up with the quilt along happening at Penny Poppleton, and I figured what did I have to lose?  Besides, the other 20 projects I am in the middle of can wait.

Green/purple in progress

A few months ago I'd ordered Liberty Love in case I ever got around to making this, so luckily I was prepared.  Choosing color/print combinations however, isn't my strong suit - I put together a green/purple bundle for the medallion, and then a blue/green bundle.  The husband liked the latter (for some reason I insisted on getting his input).  He said something about how I could totally make him one if I used dragons though....

I put together a template to foundation piece the blue/green bundle, and decided to EPP the green/purple one, figuring I'd use whichever one I liked best.  I finished the first last night, and was going to keep working on the other but realized
1. I sewed a green square of dark green into where light green should go so have to unpick it.
2. Screw it - the blue is done so the blue will be made!

There were some problems with the foundation piecing, somehow a few of the squares ended up 1/8" over on one side (guess it wasn't a perfectly square template) and one of my points doesn't line up in the middle, and the same square doesn't match up in another place.  I had to baste some pieces into place too due to the way my template was laid out, but that will be just fine once I do some quilting on it.  I'm going to just call it quirky and move on.

I haven't done flying geese and only done 60 degree triangles once before, so I'm trying not to shudder at the next steps and get excited about it. I have most of the day free to sew, so I'd better start choosing borders!